All right, welcome to season four of Inside My Canoe Head, a Canadian podcast about individual emergency preparedness, rocking an incredible life, and learning to do the things to make yourself more self-reliant in a chaotic world. Sit back, grab a beverage, and take charge of your life. All right, welcome back to the Ottawa Studios of Inside My Canoe Head. Listen, this week has been a little bit wonky, and I said in a couple of posts that I've been putting online lately, if you follow my social media feeds, that everybody here at Inside My Canoe Head, my entire tribe, has gone through various stages of COVID-19.
I'm looking at a, not a horrible infection, but I have some pretty significant lung issues that go along with it, so if I cough a bit, that's just the way it is, or if I don't have the normal full inflection in my speech, but we're all working on something. So this week, I had planned to put out my first YouTube video on camping gear and things along that lines to try to show, you know, what Inside My Canoe Head does outside of podcasting, and I literally couldn't get the breath together to talk for 20 or 30 minutes and hold things up and talk about different things and move around. It was literally exhausting. I went to the grocery store, and I was literally home and slept for two hours.
So if you've had the vid or you're planning on getting the vid, this is by far not the worst flu that I've ever had, that is for sure. But she is a different beast. You definitely know that you have something really, really neat that you've never had before. Yeah, it's just, it's something completely different.
So we're going to get back on track next week, but here we go. So this week, I want to talk about your why. So we talk in preparedness about, you know, a whole bunch of things that you might want to do. We talk about the threats, risk assessment, all these different things, but I think it's a really important foundational principle for everybody to understand why you come to this table.
Like, why are you worried about preparedness? Is it some event in the world? Is it something that happened to you? Is it just because the pictures and the gear is really cool?
Or you want to be that prepping guy on TV who has a half a million subscribers and all that other stuff? So what is your why? Like, why do you come to this party? So that's what we're going to do today.
We're going to talk about some, you know, how you look at the world, your worldview, is your thing based on fear and hope, and then some concluding comments. So sit back, grab yourself a beverage. Let's get at it. So the way we like to look at this is we ask the question, how do you come to allow preparedness to take a seat at your personal table?
So if you think about your short term memory or philosophically another way, if you think about we're in a bit of a religious time for some of the world's top religions, this is Good Friday for Christians who are celebrating the Last Supper, the death and the resurrection of Christ. If we are in the holy month of Ramadan where we celebrate the message of the prophet, peace be upon him. One of the world's religious folks are thinking about their theoretical and their spiritual existence at this time, and it's the perfect time to ask yourself about why preparedness has taken a seat at your table. If you think about the Last Supper image or you think about short term memory having six or seven things maximum, there's a very limited number of seats at your personal table, things that you allow into your life to occupy a position of prominence and to matter to you.
So right now, preparedness is trying to or has taken a seat at your personal table, and today we want to ask why. So the first thing we're going to look at is what is your world lens? And it's often referred to in academia as your theoretical framework or how you examine the world around you. So all of us have a bunch of bias, and I'm not talking about the woke social justice stuff that you hear.
I'm talking about your actual and real theoretical frame that is based upon experience. So this is not, this isn't environmental if you look into human psychology. You've experienced a whole bunch of things in this world. It's brought you to where you are today, good, bad, or indifferent, and you've built something called a theoretical framework and a lens through which you look.
And I'll give you an example. You may be a feminist. You may be an environment, an environmentalist. You may look at the world through a political lens.
You might call yourself a right-wing ideologue. You might call yourself a left-wing social justice warrior. I am a libertarian, which if you don't know politics, libertarians are not on the left and right. We're actually on the north-south vertical axis of the political stream between freedom and authoritarian rule.
We're very, very close to the freedom end of it, which means we see government as a necessary evil. It has to exist because there are certain things we collectively can't, we individually can't do as humans in a collective society, and therefore the government has to do something. But it matters how you look at the world. So if you're a feminist, you're going to examine events in the world that happen around you through that lens.
Now, Stoic philosophy teaches us that no event in the world is good or bad. But everything that happens in the world, it just is. It is us as individual human beings who assign value to that, right? So you'll believe an event is good or bad.
It's evil or it's not evil. It is happy or it is sad. Like that interpretation is yours. It's not the event.
So people do this oftentimes. They take human feelings and they assign them to events. That's a tragedy. Well, it's not a tragedy.
You've interpreted it as a tragedy, and for you it's a tragedy. But for a whole bunch of people around the world who don't share your viewpoint, that's not a tragedy. So understanding that is important because you may look at the world as an optimistic place. You may look at things as from a pessimist perspective, and that things are bad.
It's not half empty, and somebody owes me something. You may look at the world from what I call a realist perspective, and that's more of like my frame. It is what it is, right? You've heard that saying of people who say it is what it is.
Like, you know, people die, man. It sucks. But none of us are getting out of this thing alive. So do we look at the death as a tragic, horrible event, or do we look at it as that's just a normal thing of life?
Dude probably didn't want to leave now. Probably had other things that he wanted to do, but hey, here we go. And this is going to happen to me eventually as well. So it's important to reflect on that because when you respond to it is the next question.
So when you respond to events around the world and events that happen around you, do you do that from a blunt perspective or an opaque? Do you say what you feel? You know, you wear your emotions on your sleeve and everybody around you, whether they want to or not, are going to know exactly what you think about something. And you are unapologetically you in this world.
If people don't like you, then fair enough. There's seven and a half, eight billion other people that they can try and meet. Or are you a bit of opaque? You know what?
You just, what's the benefit in telling somebody that they're dumb? Like seriously, what's the benefit in telling somebody they're dumb? Yeah, I might feel good, but do I really improve their lives? And most dumb people probably are not going to realize that they're dumb anyhow, and you're not going to convince them of that probably because they're dumb.
So you see how all of this frames the world around you. So when we want to talk about your why for preparedness, it's very, very important in my mind, like seriously self-reflective to look at who you are and how you frame everything, right? And when I talk about the big question here a lot on this podcast is, are you a victim? Do you adopt the victim mentality in that the world is happening to you?
You are in the perfect, the certain situation you are now because of something else. You know, something happened to me or somebody did something to me, or somebody's oppressing me, or somebody's treating me poorly, or somebody's not giving me the advantages that I deserve. And therefore my station in life is because of somebody else's actions, aka I'm a victim. A lot of people adopt that because they fail to want to take on responsibility for their lives, right?
So do you adopt a victim mentality in life or it is what it is and whether I succeed or fail is 100% up to me because I can't control external events. You know, it's that stoic philosophy. Events around me happen. I decide what level of control they have on me and I decide how I choose to react.
So because I'm cheesed off and running around like a madman because somebody did something, that's a choice I made and it really has absolutely nothing to do with the other person. And that may seem a lot of googly gook and we're 10 minutes into it and you're like, we haven't even talked about preparedness yet. But the point is, is if you don't understand your own personal frame, then you're not going to be very good at understanding why preparedness is important to you. And if you don't truly get your why, when we start delving down into detailed preparedness plans, you need to frame, like, why am I working on 30 days of electrical supply for my house?
Because I've done the assessment of my minimal acceptable power stash that I need for my life post electrical failure. I've done that analysis and I need that for 30 days. But what's your why? Like, why are we here, dude?
Like, why are you doing this? Like, so it's very important to understand it. So when we talk about your why, let's first talk about, and this is my preparedness tip from yesterday is fear. It is the, by far the most powerful human emotion that exists.
There is nothing that will motivate a human being to do something or harness or basically prevent them from doing anything than that of fear. Now, is your fear about preparedness based on an insecurity related to an animalistic need? So I've talked about animalistic needs, and these are real folks. Like, this isn't a shot against somebody.
There are a good number of people in today's society, and I researched a bunch of this for my PhD dissertation, who are insecure. Now, they can be housing insecure, which means they're either homeless or individuals are in very precarious housing arrangements that may not be safe, let alone permanent. We have people who are food insecure. They significantly face difficulty in ensuring in the short to medium term that they have all the macronutrients requirements for their family and the people they're responsible for.
We have people who are income insecure, which means they work in either, now I'm a huge fan of the gig economy, so I don't buy the gig economy as being insecure, but people are in precarious, they set their life up where life is running for them right now, where they are insecure as to their ability to secure a sufficient income to meet their animalistic needs. You have people who are fear of outcome of others, and this is really, really important. If you're a parent, and I have had the privilege of, and I still have the privilege of being a parent, like, when you're looking at your young kids, and even my kids are in their 20s now, but you still have a great deal of apprehension and concern about their outcomes in life, and a lot of their choices are going to be theirs, they're not yours. But maybe you have a member of your family who is insecure in their health needs, and you're not sure how you're going to meet that, and it creates a sense of insecurity, which feeds a fear in your life, which drives you needing to become more prepared because you're just not, right now you're incapable, you don't have the necessary assets and skill sets to deal with a significant problem that may occur with regards to somebody else's health or their loss of income, or there's something insecure in your life that you don't have full confidence in your ability to meet your animalistic needs based on your current situation, and preparedness has reared its head and said, hey, listen, there's a bit of an antidote over here, come have a seat at my table, let's have a conversation with this thing called preparedness, and see how that can alleviate your fear and mitigate some of your concerns, like that's, you know, that's a good reason, like there's nothing shot against fear, there was a long time in my life where I had, you know, income insecurity, I had a great job in the military, but I got injured, and when you get injured, you're not sure whether your future job is secure, and then you're all of a sudden, mid-mortgage, teenage kids looking and talking about university car payments, all this other stuff, and you may be having to change careers midstream, like that is a significant preparedness concern, and you know, I'm a pretty smart guy, so it has nothing to do with being dumb, but the other way we look at your preparedness and why preparedness may have a seat at your table is hope, hope of opportunity, you're looking to secure a blanket of security to limit the extent of those fears, so you acknowledge that these fears and insecurities exist, but you're looking at it from a perspective of hope, you're looking for an opportunity to live the life that you want to live, succeed in your dreams and chase everything you want, but you're doing it specifically because you believe that nothing but the future is positive, you are exposed to threats, and we all are, we're going to go through and do so, we did a bit of work on understanding the threat analysis that's around you, we're going to do some more work on understanding that, but you're looking to mitigate these risks that exist, you identify them, and instead of protecting against them from a theoretical frame, you're looking at it from a sense of hope and opportunity, you know, for example, you may want to start your own business, I'm in the midst of starting my own business, right, so that's a bit apprehensive, you're putting your eggs in your basket, you're taking some of your limited savings, you're throwing it into the heap, you believe in yourself, you believe in the message that you have for society, and you believe you can do some good in this world, and while you're at it, you're going to try to make a few bucks to pay some bills at it, and that's a huge entrepreneurial thing, those of us with the entrepreneurial spirit, but maybe not the lifelong entrepreneurial drive, have a bit of concern, but we're taking this from a perspective of opportunity, so understanding your why, like why today, when you're sitting here on this holy weekend for many of the world's religions, and you're thinking about preparedness, kind of reflect on your why, why are you here?
And so this is not a detail in a complex analysis, this is just about more of that important self-reflection, and welcome to today's world, we're one of the top things that come into everybody's perspective is political, right, the world is politically charged, we may or may not be believers in Elon Musk's version of free speech and his acquisition or his attempt to acquire Twitter, but let's look at your political perspective as well, we can't leave that out, and this is not about bashing your political perspective, a lot of the times, if you are a theoretical frame and you're an environmentalist, so you believe, and the number one thing that frames how you look at the world and look at issues is the protection of the natural world as an environmentalist, you'll examine political views and political positions and political ideologies through the lens of environmentalism, it's the same thing if you're a feminist, it's the same thing if you're like me, and you are a libertarian, everything that pops up in the world, so when we look at the conflict in Ukraine, when we look at the subsequent secondary effects of that, like for example, I have a huge space in my life for humanitarianism, I have some exceptional friends who work in the humanitarian space who do this for a living, and it's a choice I've made not to work in that space, but I have absolute respect for them, and a couple of them are going to have to live with the consequences of the Ukraine conflict, and I don't mean the refugees, I mean the fact that we've decided to put stops on, you know, isolate Russia's exports because we want to punish Russia, but in fact what we're going to do by punishing Russia's ability to export grain to the rest of the world is we're going to starve, we are literally going to cause a famine for tens of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa and in Yemen as a direct result of our decision because Russia's bad, and so those are the response, so as a humanitarian I look at the sanctions against Russia as a really bad, bad idea because I know the secondary effect is people are going to starve to death because of what we've done now a lot of people will say just feed them elsewhere but you don't understand like there is a limited amount of grain in this world right and so there is no extra grain to take up and replace the grain that russia is not going to export people are going to starve but if you're not a humanitarian and that lens is not in your frame then you would just be pro-sanction hammer russia at every possibility make their world hurt but if you didn't know about the secondary effects of that you wouldn't see it so you can see how in real world effects your theoretical lens has an you know has a definite influence on what you do and what you say and preparedness is no different so when you look at what you think is the appropriate level of preparedness for your family so one of the big questions we're going to ask in the future this is the final point before we close for the day is we're going to ask you about a time frame in the future one of the important things in before you even decide to lay out your plans and do the planning iterations for preparedness is we're going to ask about and talk about your time frame how long which you want to be prepared for and the basic way to frame that question we use this throughout our analysis is where you live right now with the people you're responsible for if i turn off all of your utilities water sewer power um gas whatever you have from the outside world that supports your household if i turn all of that off right now how long do you want to be able to be self-reliant to be able to provide for all of your animalistic requirements for you and the people you're responsible for that's a very important question so you're going to come to that question because of this perspective and that's why we talk about your why right now because if you live in fear of not being able to feed yourself because of real food insecurity that you're existing right now that time frame is going to be a little bit longer or that's going to influence it so understanding your why and your frame of the world is so critical to know before we get into the detailed time assessment and then we get into a detailed preparedness planning so thank you very much for joining us this week listen on insidemicanewhead.ca we have links to this podcast and a whole bunch of other stuff there's a buy me coffee there they'll have a bunch of stuff coming up should you wish to do that on the other side there's a weekly newsletter there and i'm hammering that right now because i started the preparedness daily tips now it's on twitter it's on buy me a coffee and it's on instagram and what they are is monday to friday i put out a preparedness tip that is sequentially organized and then on saturdays i'll put out a weekly newsletter to those who subscribe insidemicanewhead.ca and it sums up that it gives you some thoughts about what the totality of this week's message means i look at some forecasting talk about some big thinkers in the preparedness space i'm going to start talking about the world events and how they influence preparedness and then i'm going to offer you an insight into what inside my canoehead has planned for the coming week it's absolutely free and i will say this again everything i do time immemorial on this process and on this inside my canoehead will remain free it's my passion it's something that i'm very skilled in and therefore it is something that i want to give the world for free this is absolutely free of charge i'm not keeping back any secrets and then put them behind a paywall there eventually will be a paywall in the future and that's going to have my version of master class and all that other stuff and that's everything behind that paywall fine fair enough if you want to engage that's great but all you'll ever need to know about preparedness and how to take care of you and those you're responsible for will forever and ever it will remain free and that's my mission so thanks again for joining us this week on inside my canoehead stay tuned stay safe we have got literally 342 preparedness tips to issue and i've only got 10 out there take care stay safe you you you you